Timeline of the development of tectonophysics (after 1952)

The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well.

The idea of continents with a permanent location, the geosyncline theory, the Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the extrapolation of the age of the Earth by Lord Kelvin as a black body cooling down, the contracting Earth, the Earth as a solid and crystalline body, is one school of thought. A lithosphere creeping over the asthenosphere is a logical consequence of an Earth with internal heat by radioactivity decay, the Airy-Heiskanen isostasy, thrust faults and Niskanen's mantle viscosity determinations.

Making sense of the puzzle pieces
Map of the later North Atlantic region after the closing of the Iapetus Ocean and the Caledonian/Acadian orogenies (Wilson 1966). Animals: Trilobites and graptolites.[1][2]
Euramerica in the Devonian (416 to 359 Ma) with Baltica, Avalonia (Cabot Fault, Newfoundland and Great Glen Fault, Scotland; cited in Wilson 1962) and Laurentia (Other parts: Iberian Massif and Armorican terrane).
  • 1953, the Great Global Rift, running along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, was discovered by Bruce Heezen (Lamont Group) (Puzzle pieces: Seismic-refraction and Sonar survey of the rifts). (Ewing & Ewing 1959), (Heezen 1960), (Heezen & Tharp 1961), (Heezen & Tharp 1964), (Heezen & Tharp 1966)
  • World map of earthquake epicenters, oceanic ones mainly (Rothé 1954).
  • 1954–1963: Alfred Rittmann was elected IAV President (IAV at that time) for three periods.
  • 1956, S. K. Runcorn becomes a drifter. (Frankel 1987, p. 221), (Runcorn 1956)
  • S. W. Carey, plate tectonics (Carey 1956). But he believed here in an Expanding Earth.
  • 1958, Henry William Menard notes that most mid-ocean ridges are halfway between the two continental edges ((Menard 1958) cited in (Bullard 1975)).
  • Seafloor spreading
  • Dott (1961), the Permian tillite at Squantum, Massachusetts, was reclassified as turbidite. It was used as argument by anti-drifters.
  • P. M. S. Blakett (1960), Blakett's former lecturer S. K. Runcorn (1962), Runcorn's former student E. Irving: Paleomagnetism.
  • 1962, S.K. Runcorn applies the Rayleigh's theory of convection: convection occurs if viscosity under the crust is less than 1026-1027 CGS units. (Runcorn 1962b)
  • 1962, Subduction in the Aleutian Islands, Robert R. Coats (USGS). (Coats 1962)
  • Wunderlich, H.G. (March 1962). "50 Jahre Kontinentalverschiebungstheorie - von Wegener bis Runcorn" [50 Years Continental Drift Hypothesis - Wegener to Runcorn]. Geologische Rundschau. 52 (1): 504–513. Bibcode:1962GeoRu..52..504W. doi:10.1007/BF01840095. S2CID 128754334.
    • The uncertainty of the distance between Europe and North America is too great to confirm the continental drift hypothesis. It states wrongly that the lock-and-key form of South America and Africa is less good if the continental shelf is taken into account. Note: the truth is that neither A. Wegener nor C. Schuchert used the east coastline of South America and west coastline of Africa, really; these coastlines don't fit (Bullard 1975).

Plate tectonics
The "Bullard's Fit" of the Iapetus Ocean suture zone.
Approximate location of Mesoproterozoic (older than 1.3 Ga) cratons in South America and Africa. The São Luís and the Luis Alves cratonic fragments are shown (Brazil), but the Arequipa–Antofalla craton, the Saharan Metacraton and some minor African cratons are not. Other versions describe the Guiana Shield separated from the Amazonian shield by a depression.

Geodynamics
Euler rotational pole.
Spreading at a mid-ocean ridge (the image has a flaw though, the seafloor gets thicker with age).
Approximate world distribution of living Cycadales
A distribution map of Gnetophyta colour-coded by genus:
Green – Welwitschia
Blue – Gnetum
Red – Ephedra
Purple – Gnetum and Ephedra range overlap

Overview

Many concepts had to be changed:

The shifting and evolution of knowledge and concepts, were from:

Profile of the East Swiss Alps (1880, from Northeast to Southwest) by Albert Heim, before he accepted the theory of thrusting. Key: #a Gneiss, shist and so on, #b Jura, #c Cretaceous and #d Eocene; Walensee, Schaechental, Windgaelle and Finsteraarhorn.

Actually, there were two main "schools of thought" that pushed plate tectonics forward:

Wegener's continental drift hypotheses is a logical consequence of: the theory of thrusting (alpine geology), the isostasy, the continents forms resulting from the supercontinent Gondwana break up, the past and present-day life forms on both sides of the Gondwana continent margins, and the Permo-Carboniferous moraine deposits in South Gondwana.

Graphics
Plate tectonics map, Digital Tectonic Activity Map

[14]

Global plate tectonic movement

[15]

See also

References

Notes
  1. Windley 1996.
  2. Ziegler 1990.
  3. Hurley et al. 1966.
  4. Hurley et al. 1967.
  5. McPhee 1998.
  6. Bill Bonini; Laurie Wanat, eds. (Fall 2003). "Jason Morgan Retires" (PDF). The Smilodon: The Princeton Geosciences Newsletter. 44 (2). Fortuitously, he was assigned as well an office that he shared for two years with Fred Vine,... This insight was fundamental to the revolutionary theory then developing, and sharing that office with Fred Vine drew Morgan into the subject — as he puts it — “with a bang.” A paper written by H.W. Menard caused him to begin musing on his own about great faults and fracture zones, and how they might relate to theorems on the geometry of spheres
  7. Poinar GO, Danforth BN (October 2006). "A fossil bee from Early Cretaceous Burmese amber" (PDF). Science. 314 (5799): 614. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.627.551. doi:10.1126/science.1134103. PMID 17068254. S2CID 28047407. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-12-04.
  8. Dave Mosher (December 26, 2007). "Modern beetles predate dinosaurs". Live Science. Retrieved June 24, 2010.
  9. Brian M. Wiegmann, Michelle D. Trautwein, Isaac S. Winkler, Norman B. Barr, Jung-Wook Kim, Christine Lambkin, Matthew A. Bertone, Brian K. Cassel, Keith M. Bayless, Alysha M. Heimberg, Benjamin M. Wheeler, Kevin J. Peterson, Thomas Pape, Bradley J. Sinclair, Jeffrey H. Skevington, Vladimir Blagoderov, Jason Caravas, Sujatha Narayanan Kutty, Urs Schmidt-Ott, Gail E. Kampmeier, F. Christian Thompson, David A. Grimaldi, Andrew T. Beckenbach, Gregory W. Courtney, Markus Friedrich, Rudolf Meier & David K. Yeates (2011). "Episodic radiations in the fly tree of life". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 108 (14): 5690–5695. Bibcode:2011PNAS..108.5690W. doi:10.1073/pnas.1012675108. PMC 3078341. PMID 21402926.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. Araki et al. 2005.
  11. Scotese, Christopher. "The Paleomap Project".
  12. "Center for Geodynamics, Geological Survey of Norway".
  13. "EarthByte Group, University of Sydney". Archived from the original on 2012-06-28.
  14. The Digital Tectonic Activity Map (DTAM) was produced by Paul Lowman and colleagues at NASA GSFC, 1998.
  15. NASA/JPL, courtesy of Michael B. Heflin, 2007.9. See Bird (2003) and Dr. Ron Blakey, Northern Arizona University.

Cited books
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  • P.M.S. Blackett, E.C. Bullard and S.K. Runcorn (ed). A Symposium on Continental Drift, held on 28 October 1965. pp. 323:
  • Carey, S. W. (1958). "The tectonic approach to continental drift". In Carey, S. W. (ed.). Continental Drift—A symposium, held in March 1956. Hobart: Univ. of Tasmania. pp. 177–363. Expanding Earth from p. 311 to p. 349.
  • Coats, Robert R. (1962). "Magma type and crustal structure in the Aleutian arc". The Crust of the Pacific Basin. American Geophysical Union Monograph. 6. pp. 92–109.
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  • W.A.J.M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht, Bailey Willis, Rollin T. Chamberlin, John Joly, G.A.F. Molengraaff, J.W. Gregory, Alfred Wegener, Charles Schuchert, Chester R. Longwell, Frank Bursley Taylor, William Bowie, David White, Joseph T. Singewald, Jr., and Edward W. Berry (1928). W.A.J.M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht (ed.). Theory of Continental Drift: a symposium on the origin and movement of land masses both intercontinental and intracontinental as proposed by Alfred Wegener, A Symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG, 1926). Tulsa, OK. p. 240.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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  • Holmes, Arthur (1929b). The Origin of Continents and Oceans.
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  • Jeffreys, H. (1924). The Earth - its Origin, History and Physical Constitution (1 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 429.
    • Jeffreys, H. (1952). The Earth - its Origin, History and Physical Constitution (3 ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 574. ISBN 978-0-521-20648-8.
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    • Kearey, Philip; Klepeis, Keith A.; Vine, Frederik J. (2009). Global tectonics (3 ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. 482. ISBN 978-1-4051-0777-8.
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Cited articles

Further reading
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